With government shutdown, expect furloughs

Sunday

Sep 29, 2013 at 12:01 AMSep 29, 2013 at 2:49 PM

WASHINGTON - The Pentagon would furlough 400,000 civilian workers and temporarily stop paying death benefits to military families. The National Park Service would close all 401 national parks and give overnight campers two days to leave. Calls to the IRS would go unanswered.

WASHINGTON — The Pentagon would furlough 400,000 civilian workers and temporarily stop paying death benefits to military families. The National Park Service would close all 401 national parks and give overnight campers two days to leave. Calls to the IRS would go unanswered.

Those are among the effects that the public probably will notice first if federal agencies start shutting down on Tuesday because Congress has failed to pass a bill to provide money for the new fiscal year.

Agencies began disclosing their contingency plans on Friday, and the announcements immediately became part of the partisan back-and-forth over whether the government will shut down and who is to blame.

Unlike some Washington budget battles, the effect of a shutdown would quickly become visible. About half the government’s civilian workforce, about 1.2 million employees, is expected to face furloughs. The Pentagon would have to stop paying service members, though they would still have to report to duty.

The paychecks due on Oct. 15 would be the first not issued — if a shutdown lasted long enough, said Undersecretary of Defense Robert F. Hale, the Pentagon’s top financial officer, who briefed reporters. The department would also be forced to stop such payments as death benefits, he said.

“We would have no authority to pay the money, and in that case the payment would be delayed,” he said.

A shutdown would grow increasingly difficult to manage over time, as the military runs out of options for delaying operations and is prohibited from entering into any new contracts with vendors, he said. “The severity effects would grow quickly if it turns out to be long,” Hale said.

Because Congress has failed to pass any of the money bills needed to fund government agencies, most will have to begin shutting down when the new budget year begins on Tuesday. The exceptions are programs that do not require annual appropriations, including Social Security and Medicare, and those deemed essential to protect life, property and national security. Fire suppression would continue, for example, but parks would close.

Furloughed employees could be paid retroactively if Congress passed a law authorizing it. Retroactive pay was approved after the shutdowns of the mid-1990s but is not guaranteed.

The last time a comparable shutdown happened, in 1995 and 1996, the effect on the economy was substantial. Closing parks cost nearby businesses about $14 million each day, according to the Congressional Research Service. The nonprofit National Parks Conservation Association projects that the hit this time would be more than twice as large.

At the Department of Homeland Security, which includes the U.S. Secret Service, the Coast Guard, the Transportation Security Administration, Customs and Border Protection, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement, most of the 231,117 workers would remain on the job. Officials said 31,295 would be furloughed.

By contrast, more than half of the Department of Health and Human Services’ 78,000 workers would be furloughed.

The Internal Revenue Service would halt taxpayer services such as responding to questions and conducting audits.